Episode 251: Seeking Contentment in the Holidays & Life

Ever wondered how to embrace the holiday season with more joy and less stress?

In this episode of the Women's Money Wisdom Podcast, Melissa Joy, CFP®, CDFA® dives into the pressures of holiday obligations and the transformative power of letting go of perfection. Drawing from her own holiday experiences, including cherished traditions at Greenfield Village, Melissa shares how prioritizing joy can create a more fulfilling season.

We explore how social media and personal standards fuel comparison, often leading to stress, and how shifting focus to what truly matters can change both your holidays and your financial mindset. The conversation highlights how women, in particular, can navigate added holiday expectations with grace and confidence.

Beyond holiday traditions, we tackle how comparison impacts financial decisions and overall well-being. By embracing imperfection, you can not only manage holiday pressures but also apply these lessons to everyday life, including how you approach money and lifestyle choices.

Listen and Learn:

• Finding Joy in Imperfection: Let go of comparison and embrace your unique journey.
• Prioritizing What Matters: How small changes can create a more meaningful holiday season.
• Navigating Financial Pressures: Insights on how comparison impacts financial decisions.
• Everyday Lessons from Holiday Experiences: Apply these strategies year-round to enhance well-being.

Join us as we celebrate the beauty of imperfection and discover ways to make the holiday season—and life—a more joyful and fulfilling experience. Tune in today!

The previous presentation by PEARL PLANNING was intended for general information purposes only. No portion of the presentation serves as the receipt of, or as a substitute for, personalized investment advice from PEARL PLANNING or any other investment professional of your choosing. Different types of investments involve varying degrees of risk, and it should not be assumed that future performance of any specific investment or investment strategy, or any non-investment related or planning services, discussion or content, will be profitable, be suitable for your portfolio or individual situation, or prove successful. Neither PEARL PLANNING’s investment adviser registration status, nor any amount of prior experience or success, should be construed that a certain level of results or satisfaction will be achieved if PEARL PLANNING is engaged, or continues to be engaged, to provide investment advisory services. PEARL PLANNING is neither a law firm nor accounting firm, and no portion of its services should be construed as legal or accounting advice. No portion of the video content should be construed by a client or prospective client as a guarantee that he/she will experience a certain level of results if PEARL PLANNING is engaged, or continues to be engaged, to provide investment advisory services. A copy of PEARL PLANNING’s current written disclosure Brochure discussing our advisory services and fees is available upon request or at https:...

Transcript

Melissa Joy: 0:01

Welcome to the Women's Money Wisdom Podcast. I'm Melissa Joy, a certified financial planner and the founder of Pearl Planning. My goal is to help you streamline and organize your finances, navigate big money decisions with confidence and be strategic in order to grow your wealth. As a woman, you work hard for your money and I'm here to help you make the most of it. Now let's get into the show.

Melissa Joy: 0:36

Hi everybody. It is Christmas Eve when you have the opportunity to start listening to this, and I'm recording a couple weekends before, but it's the end of the day. I've needed to get this episode recorded all week and I kept delaying and that kind of caused me to pivot and change my mind about what I wanted to talk about today. I had a plan and I will still have this episode soon talking about your personal money story, which I think is really important. Talking about your personal money story, which I think is really important. But knowing that this episode was coming out one Christmas Eve and I know not everyone celebrates Christmas, but it is something that I celebrate it made me think more about this holiday season, which isn't just about the holidays but definitely, you know, most of you listening are women and there is a lot of obligation that some of us, if not many of us, take on when it comes to the holidays. There's expectations. There's you know the spectacle, and I find myself oftentimes either comparing myself to others or, in many, if not most, cases, comparing myself to my own expectations, which often is just. There's a lot of tension in the holiday season about what it means to be successful, and I love the holidays and they're my favorite time of the year. I look forward to them every year, but I spend a lot of time regretting or feeling challenges about my own success during this time as well, and so I thought we could talk about that today, because this is something that happens to people all the time when it comes to their money.

Melissa Joy: 2:30

If you've heard the saying, comparison is the thief of joy, I think that's what many of us live. There's this treadmill that we're always trying to keep up with, or on where we are trying to go faster and faster and faster, working to keep up with whatever it is we're comparing ourselves to. Like I mentioned, in many cases, we're comparing ourselves to our own ideal, but then we're also influenced by others. We're influenced by our neighbors, but it's not just keeping up with the Joneses nowadays, because we don't just see the new car our neighbor across the street has. We see what's happening all over the world via algorithms, via social media or even when we search for things. Nowadays, ai is influencing what we see. So whenever we're on the internet, we are giving ourselves the opportunity for comparison, and I think we have less and less time for reflection about what we really enjoy and appreciate, and there are many parts of the holiday season, getting back to the moment at hand, that I really love and never want to give up.

Melissa Joy: 3:49

I love sending Christmas cards and holiday greetings to friends and family. I don't do a great job of keeping track of my address book list, so I just went through and looked up a few addresses and put the last stamps on the last few Christmas postcards this year, which I'll have to tell you, is a game changer. I hope they go in the mail well, but it was a big deal for me because you didn't have to seal those envelopes. So one less step or a couple in the process, and I also pre-labeled things. But I never want to give that up and there may be a time that I changed my mind.

Melissa Joy: 4:30

But oftentimes enjoying the holidays does have to do with editing. So we have a family tradition of here in Michigan going to Greenfield Village each holiday season and I just it was first of all a kind of race to get an ideal date, because some of those dates sell out and it was happening in October and I also just couldn't have foresight into our calendars into December and it felt good to edit that out so that that wasn't one more thing that we needed to attend or go to. And I think the acknowledgement that you're just not ever going to do everything and sometimes that's okay, in fact it's enough is really important with the holiday season and it's also a critical mindset when it comes to your sense of well-being, when it comes to your money, your life, your lifestyle, etc. So it is so easy to be comparing yourself to others. I know when I say I love sending out the holiday cards, or when someone receives a card or a gift from me, there's that automatic oh, I'm not going to be sending any cards, I'm sorry. Or I got a few texts when our company sent Christmas cards this year holiday cards saying you know, sorry, I'm not sending anything, but I liked your card and in my book. There's no need to be apologetic.

Melissa Joy: 5:54

Keeping track is really difficult and it's okay to kind of pick what you're going to do. That friend that texted me and said I'm not going to do a card was posting their family tradition of cooking and baking for the holidays with multi-generational bakers and then I really felt like, oh gosh, this is something I should be doing, but I'm not going to do it. Just don't do the baking with my kids, so that's okay, because we can't do everything. Because we can't do everything. In fact, one of my favorite other sayings when it comes to advising people on their wealth is you can do anything, but you cannot do everything. Even with boundless resources and money, time is so much of a constraint, and so I encourage you. This evening I'm going to have just a brief episode of meditation, because I know you're listening to this episode.

Melissa Joy: 6:49

Around the holidays or likely leading up to the new year, I would encourage you to keep exploring and even perhaps journaling about what is right for you, and so I would start with the holiday season and you could reflect on the things that you did and that you love and the things you could do without, and it may even be something that you want to kind of put in your calendar as a reminder for next year into early November Like, hey, I bought a lot of decorations when we really already had some, or don't. We've got a real tree, but I didn't enjoy the needles in the house things that you would like to remind your future self about, and then I would also encourage you to be thinking about your life in general with the same kind of mentality. So reflect on what you want that may be because of outside influence and what is really important to you, and then also do a reflection where you focus on the positive and recognize where things are going really well. So giving yourself encouragement can kind of sometimes take a meditation, some space and some time, and so I think this is the perfect day and season to have some of that reflection and to share it with the rest of your family. To have some of that reflection and to share it with the rest of your family.

Melissa Joy: 8:16

And then one exercise that I'd recommend, which came to my friends from Shaping Wealth, who have boundless ideas when it comes to the intersection of people's well-being and their money, is an episode, or episode is a exercise, where you can reflect on what you would like to start, make a list of the things that you would like to stop and make a list of things you would like to keep. So then there's some intention, whether that comes to your holiday activities and traditions, when it comes to your goals, your financial goals in life, an assessment of you know, prioritizing which things are most important to you. That can be even coming with the advice that we give to clients. So sometimes a client may be doing some savings habits and it makes sense for them to stop investing somewhere or make a change, because current life circumstances require both new starts but also stops and, sometimes, things that you need to intentionally keep. So, with that, I wish you happy holidays.

Melissa Joy: 9:31

The new year is forthcoming and our next episode will be talking about how to plan for 2025. And I just so appreciate the opportunity, as I do my own exercise. Even though I put off doing this episode today, which is rare, I would definitely say keep to the podcast. So, those of you who are listening, it's truly a pleasure to have the opportunity to converse with you about money, life and well-being, and thank you for listening. Happy holidays.

Melissa Joy: 10:19

Thank you for listening to the Women's Money Wisdom Podcast. If you found value in this episode, the best way you can support the podcast is to forward an episode to a friend or leave a review. Go to pearlplancom and the podcast link to get all the resources and links mentioned.